SASL Newsletter - Spring 2017 Issue Issue 5 - Spring 2017 | Page 5

Continued from page 1: ASL Festival in a Small Town is a Good Idea!
This past September 2016, Bisbee, Arizona, a small artistic community of under 6,000
residents hosted a very successful ASL festival in the parks and venues around town. Many
wondered why such a small community in a county with a very low number of Deaf residents
would bother to host an ASL festival. We did so because our Cochise County Deaf community is
aging and many cannot make the drive to the bigger Deaf Nation events in Las Vegas or New
Orleans anymore. Therefore, the ASL Club at our local community college, Cochise College,
decided to raise the funds to bring a festival to our community instead, to bring the “mountain to
Mohammad,” to quote the Bible. Our goal at first was to provide a weekend of education and
entertainment for our Deaf community and hearing ASL students, but after the event, we noticed
many more benefits to having a festival in a small town. I write this article to encourage other
small, rural towns to consider hosting their own festivals as well and perhaps spread the notion of
the “Deaf Small Town” along with “Deaf Nation.”
In order to raise the funds to bring in famous Deaf lecturers and entertainers and secure
the venues, the ASL Club engaged our hearing students in fund raising such as bake sales,
candy apple sales, car washes, and the usual means of earning money by school organizations.
Of course, however, these methods were not earning enough and we turned as well to grant
writing. I attended the Deaf Expo in Phoenix, AZ in 2015 and noted that there were no health
organizations represented and thought given our aging population, health education, and
screening would be a great addition. As well, it is much easier to write grants to get money for
health related causes, so I wrote to The Legacy Foundation of Southeastern Arizona and secured
half our needed budget by including health related activities in the festival. Our local health
department provided CPR training and diabetes education and screening to the festival and the
ASL Club paid for the ASL interpreters.
We were able to secure Dr. Sam Supalla as our keynote speaker for a lecture on
Academic ASL and Universal Design for ASL on Friday afternoon, September 23 rd and CJ Jones
for workshops on Friday and as our keynote entertainer for Saturday night, September 24th.
Because Bisbee is such a small town, we, as locals, were able to get discounts for the Deaf for
hotel rooms and the ASL Club provided the interpreters to our tourist attractions in exchange for
half price entrance fees for the Deaf to the ghost tour and mine tour, for example.
Interpreted ghost tour
in Downtown Bisbee
(Continue on the next page)
The Power of ASL
5
Spring 2017 – Issue 5